Pharma & Patient Summit USA Virtual

Dec 1, 2020 - Dec 4, 2020, Digital Conference, Networking & Exhibition

The number one event in North America where patient-centric leaders formulate strategy

A burning desire to make a difference for patients

Annexus Health, eyeforpharma’s 2020 Health Start-up winner is on a mission for patients



 
Annexus Health describes itself as a company “with a burning fire to make a difference in patient care”. Attendees at eyeforpharma’s Philadelphia Virtual meeting certainly thought so too, voting it the best health start-up from a strong field of contenders
 
The company exists to help provider organizations navigate the administrative and financial complexities involved in patient care in the US.
 
Doing so is a huge challenge, since tools to help centralise the administrative and logistical work required of provider organizations to manage patient care journeys appropriately have been lacking. 
 
Annexus has built an enterprise platform to plug this gap. It operates with other enterprise platforms for example EMR, Revenue Cycle Management System and Pharmacy dispensing software to help simplify patients’ care journey and outcomes by providing tools to centralise the administrative and logistical work involved.
 
Its Software as a Service (SaaS) AssistPoint tool, currently focused on patient affordability in oncology, helps US provider organizations search, enroll, track and analyse access and financial assistance. 
 
After their win this week, co-founders Joe Baffone (JB), Annexus CEO, and Brad Frazier (BF), its President, spared eyeforpharma some time to explain its goals.
 
Q: Tell us a bit about your mission
 
JB:
“There are amazing resources available to help providers and patients administer and receive appropriate care, but before Annexus Health there were no comprehensive technology tools available to perform, manage and oversee this important administrative work.”
 
“We are organizing, compressing and automating workflows to solve the administrative labyrinth of financial assistance. This is important because the provider organizations are and need to be the quarterback in complex disease states like oncology.”
   
“Annexus offers front door access to patient centricity. Providers are the virtual house where the patients’ care journey is managed. AssistPoint facilitates the most efficient and compressed way to participate appropriately in the patients’ care journey. 
 
“AssistPoint allows pharma and healthcare service providers the ability to truly meet users where they live using APIs to facilitate seamless integrations to services and support.
 
Q: There is much talk of patient centricity in pharma and healthcare - in your experience how well does practice on the ground match the talk?
 
JB:
“It’s a challenging dilemma. There are certainly things pharma companies, service providers and other life science organizations can do to improve their patient centric approach by understanding true patient needs. 
 
“Examples in this environment of the crisis created by the pandemic would be to loosen up restrictions on access services or contribute more to charitable foundations. The real shifts will occur when stakeholders either intentionally come together or are required, for example with the CMS/ONC final rule on interoperability of patient electronic health information, to come together to create common standards, applications and approaches.”
 
BF:
“In our belief, it is by working backwards from the viewpoint of the patient (and those caring for the patient) and collaborating with others who touch the patient in like ways, that we will truly transform patient centricity.”
 
Q: What needs to happen in your view to move things on for patients now?
 
JB:
“Breaking down barriers to innovation [by] allowing the competition to join you is paramount. Collaboration around common applications to serve the patient through those that truly touch the patient will be the key in shifting to patient centricity.” 
 
Q: What do you think appealed to the attendees to vote for Annexus?
 
JB:
“It’s hard to say with the incredible competition. It could be the fact that, in the face of the pandemic, more than ever folks are sensitive to the plight of patients and providers as it relates to the economic stresses that commonly exist but are exponentially worse now.”
 
“My hope is that the voters saw a company and application demonstrating a commitment to its vision of removing barriers to care for patients with a bad ass disruptive technology approach.”
 
BF:
“Our desire with everything we build is to make the super complex, amazingly simple and intuitive to the end consumer.  Our vision is to leave the complexity on the internal whiteboards, in the code, and so on.  Ultimately, we hope the audience left with a feeling of a product that makes complete sense for a huge unanswered problem.”  
 
Q: New growth, new hires and an upcoming funding round will help drive the next stages of growth. Tell us a bit about your next steps?
 
JB:
“We plan to launch a full-service, tech-enabled financial assistance service, which will be called ADPARO. We will internalize all manual functions of financial assistance beyond patient intake and signature capture. We will have a service center utilizing our technology/robust analytics to manage and report upon all aspects of financial assistance for our contracted provider groups, institutions and health systems.” 
 
BF:
“Annexus plans to develop new administrative and logistical tools in areas including benefit verification, prior authorizations, remote management of orals and self injectables, cell/gene and diagnostics.
 
“We have a vision of being the air traffic controller for management of administrative and logistical functions important to the cancer patient’s care journey and we plan to collaborate, not compete, with entities providing solutions in the areas of our expansion.”
 
“In addition, we will extend AssistPoint into other disease states such as rheumatoid arthritis, ophthalmology, MS/neurology, gastroenterology, hemophilia and nephrology/dialysis.”
 
 


Pharma & Patient Summit USA Virtual

Dec 1, 2020 - Dec 4, 2020, Digital Conference, Networking & Exhibition

The number one event in North America where patient-centric leaders formulate strategy